1968-
2019-
Jenna Yeager served as a Generalist in Chile, focusing on education and outreach (schools, campesino groups, cooperatives), mostly centered around conservation and the environment. She writes that they “usually had movies, fire training and suppression. Patrullaje aereo para incendios. Planting pino (viveros) at several schools. Though I was a 'AB generalist in Chile', I really liked the work I was doing and upon return to the US, I entered into grad school forestry program. I gravitated toward the technical/IT/remote sensing parts of forestry and started as a field forester with BLM in Idaho. I was a GIS manager for many years at the BLM state level, then spent the last 17 years at the HQ level as a technical (IT/GIS) program manager in across natural resource disciplines, particularly with strategic planning and execution. Peace Corps really confirmed what I had sensed in college, that I wanted to be involved in public service - and it narrowed my focus to natural resources/the natural environment. I got a first taste of the competing demands and the issues surrounding natural resource management while in Chile, which has served me well in my subsequent work in US federal land management agencies. As mentioned above, Peace Corps gave me an awareness of the wide variety of views regarding the environment as well as tools to help understand and make interpretations. That experience, coupled with my long professional federal career, has now flowed into the current research/writing that I'm doing re: how advanced analytics and AI can help public sector line managers in natural resource agencies.